Italian researchers Focardi and Rossi claim to have made a break even cold fusion reactor. Huge news if it is true.
Seems still in the press release phase, but I’ll be keeping an eye on this story.
More detail in the patent application and technical paper.
Worth mentioning that the device is dead simple. It would be relatively easy to replicate the experiment.
For background see article on cold fusion.
UPDATE:
Physorg is covering the story with due skepticism. This paragraph is most telling to me:
Rossi and Focardi have applied for a patent that has been partially rejected in a preliminary report. According to the report, “As the invention seems, at least at first, to offend against the generally accepted laws of physics and established theories, the disclosure should be detailed enough to prove to a skilled person conversant with mainstream science and technology that the invention is indeed feasible. … In the present case, the invention does not provide experimental evidence (nor any firm theoretical basis) which would enable the skilled person to assess the viability of the invention.
Prometheus Fusion Perfection 
Wow. Stunning if this pans out.
I’m old enough to remember Pons and Fleischmann, but this feels different.
We shall see.
“It would be relatively easy to replicate the experiment.”
…maybe you should give it a try! :)
I might! Really depends on the level of detail available on the experiment.
Appears to be a scam – the articles seem to be
self-published on a blog reportedly run by the authors called
“Journal of Nuclear Physics”. More details at
http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/14/focardi-and-rossi-reality-or-scam/
The blog in question: http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/ If
it was just their own blog they would have no need to add text like
“All the articles published on the Journal Of Nuclear Physics are
Peer Reviewed.” in the sidebar (the subtitle still says “Nuclear
experiments blog” – pretty contradictory). Looks like it tries to
appear as something it is not. I didn’t figure much out of their
paper as I don’t have the necessary chemistry and physics
background, someone else has to peer review it in detail, but I’m
not too hopeful. :/
Yeah, I read the paper and it is rather vauge about certain details of the setup, awkwardly so. Perhaps to give enough leeway to claim it was set up incorrectly when people try to replicate the results and fail to do so. If they do demonstrate power, my first thought would be that they accidentally reinvented the Nickel-Hydrogen battery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_hydrogen_battery). Of course, it would be easy to verify whether nuclear reactions were taking place in any case.
This thing smells of scam to me.
Let’s see if it can be replicated and the exact methods published in a proper physics journal.
smells fishy, andrea rossi was allready convicted for an energy scam in italy, the so called petroldragon affair…
It sounds *extremely* suspicious to me, especially given their reluctance to give an observer free reign with his radiation detector. I hope it’s not the case, but I smell another black eye for non-traditional fusion research coming.
Agreed.
Paint me a skeptic. I’m not going to all-out deny their claims because I honestly don’t know. But I keep getting the impression that they don’t really know/aren’t saying enough to substantiate the claims aside from “we did it”. Right now this contraption is sitting next to all of the fuel economy maximizers out there.
Does anyone else think the contraption looks suspiciously like the cold fusion reactor from the movie “The Saint”?